


city drowning

by braigwen_s



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Crime Scenes, Gen, Momboss and Detectiveson, Pre-forensics Because This Is Peak Noir Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Currently, he was kneeling by the corpse of the victim (mid-thirties, not yet identified, golden eyes of the Fire Nation but fur trim of the Water Tribes).  His throat had been cut, and his shirt was brown from the dried blood.
Relationships: Lin Beifong & Mako
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	city drowning

They were at the scene of a murder, Mako as a detective, two metalbenders to keep the perimeter, and Beifong there to supervise his first solo street death investigation. Interfering with his case was her way of saying “I know this is how your parents died, and it’s okay to get upset or screw it up”. He appreciated it. Currently, he was kneeling by the corpse of the victim (mid-thirties, not yet identified, golden eyes of the Fire Nation but fur trim of the Water Tribes). His throat had been cut, and his shirt was brown from the dried blood. He was just … lying there, in the alley. 

“I think that he bled out,” he said. He was keeping his words precise to compensate for … he wasn’t quite sure what. Probably Beifong’s concern. Trying to show off, prove that trauma didn’t impede his work. 

“No,” she said. Mako looked up; she hadn’t crouched or knelt like he had, but she’d been studying the corpse with her distant but practiced eye. But he was pretty sure that he was right. The man – no, the victim – had no other discernible injuries, and the amount of blood that had been spilled was pretty massive. 

“Chief?” he asked, a polite and deferential query that demanded an explanation. She shifted her gaze from the victim to him, but he thought she looked a little distant. Like she was thinking about something else more than she was thinking about this. As he waited for her to reply, she rubbed at the back of her neck. He wondered if she was trying not to offend him, or something – the victim was probably mixed Fire Nation, for one thing. Like him and Bolin. 

But when she spoke, her voice was clipped; clinical. If anything, there was a faint upper-class accent leaking through, that he’d never heard on the clock. She preferred to speak like the rest of them, and he knew it drove President Raiko mad. That was probably why she did it, at least a bit. To annoy other rich people. “Have you ever,” she said, in the voice of a middle-aged madam in upper Ba Sing Se, discussing weather, “drowned in your blood?” 

He blinked. Thought of getting roughed up on the streets, the metallic tang in his mouth after a fight. Lying huddled in a corner, wishing he didn’t hurt too much to sleep. “Metaphorically?” His own voice sounded strange, too, just a little. Why was she asking this? Oh, right, the victim. She’d said he hadn’t died from blood loss. “Yes.” 

The left side of her mouth twisted. “I meant literally.” He didn’t see the need to reply to that; he’d more or less just said he hadn’t. He just waited, again, sitting on his haunches on cobblestones, waiting for whatever gory fact she came out with. There were crime dramas on the radio, sometimes, vastly unrealistic, but the grizzled, jaded old detectives always reminded him of Beifong. “When you breathe it in,” she explained, “it goes into your lungs. It’s just like water.” 

She said it like a personal confession. Maybe she’d killed someone that way. He knew that she had killed; it was something he’d learned to notice as a teen. It was something he could never quite put into words, a general bearing, a different kind of regard for life to other people. He’d seen it in triad dragonheads, and he’d seen it in women who shook and flinched when a man spoke too loudly. A few times, in veterans, old men who hissed at his fire and younger ones in the uniforms of the United Forces. Korra carried it, as well, but he didn’t know if it was her or all the other Avatars. Beifong … well, it hadn’t really surprised him. There was a lot of combat in her job, the type that was kill-or-be-killed. She still always tried to talk first. But she did wash her hands after a fight. 

He realized he was meant to react to what she had just told him. “And that’s how you think the victim died? Chief? He drowned?” 

She hummed noncommittally. “Some people survive it,” she said, and turned away. He watched her stride over to the other metalbenders, discuss something with them about security. Her hair swung behind her as she walked, and her left side was facing towards him; the scars on her cheek fully bared. A thought occurred to him, and he hoped that it was wrong. 

It seemed an awful way to die, and more horrific to live through. 

He returned his attention to the victim, jotting down two possible causes of death. If his parents had been alive, they would have been older than the victim. Closer to Beifong’s age.

**Author's Note:**

> This work may not be classified as a gift, but it is dedicated to @musicplayer81. Months ago, in a conversation that had nothing to do with Avatar or detective noir or even ... anything in this fic, she used the phrase "drowning in her own blood". The sentence she used that in has stuck with me, as has the phrase. The title is inspired by that conversation, too.
> 
> And yes, the implication is that Lin was drowning in her own blood after her face was cut open by her cables. I like to call that day the Lincident, or Lin Incident.
> 
> \--------------------------------------------
> 
> you know the drill, toss a comment to your author.
> 
> A dragonhead is the Japanese (=triad) term for a gang kingpin.


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